Why she lives with the people
She lives with these people because she has to, the reason for this is that her parents died and she was taken in by her aunt, not her real her late uncles wife, who promised on Jane’s biological fathers death bed to care and tend to the needs of Jane as if she was her very own, this of course was not the reality.
John and Jane
John Reed says to Jane: ‘you have no business to take our books;’ you are a dependant, mamma says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentleman’s children like us . . . .’ Jane absorbs these s insults like a sponge it rips down her self esteem each time she is ridiculed or branded. Her class difference translates into physical difference, and Jane believes that she is physically inferior to the Reed children.
Makes small references to gender roles
Jane’s argument with John also points to the potential gender conflicts within the text. Jane at a disadvantage because of her class status, but her position as female leaves her vulnerable to the rules of a patriarchal tyrant. John is an over-indulged only son, described by Jane as ‘unwholesome’ and ‘thick,’ someone who habitually gorges himself. Contrasting completely with Jane’s thin, modest appearance, John Reed is a picture of excess: his gluttony feeds his violent emotions, such as constant bullying and punishing of Jane.
Reading
Jane’s choice of books is also significant in this scene. Like a bird, she would like the freedom of flying away from the alienation she feels at the Reed’s house. The extreme climate of the birds’ homes in the Arctic, ‘that reservoir of frost and snow,’ the ‘death-white realms,’ again creates a contrast with the fire that explodes later in the chapter during John and Jane’s violent encounter. Books provide Jane with an escape from her unhappy domestic situation. For Jane, each picture in Bewick’s tale offers a story that sparks her keen imagination. Jane’s situation as she sits reading Bewick’s History of Birds provides significant imagery.
Red Room
The red curtains that enclose Jane in her isolated window seat connect with the imagery of the red-room to which Jane is banished to at the end of the chapter. The color red is symbolic. Connoting fire and passion, red offers vitality, but also has the potential to burn everything that comes in its way to ash. The symbolic energy of the red curtains contrast with the dreary November day that Jane watches outside her window: ‘a pale blank of mist and cloud.’
The characterization of Jane is also developed in this chapter. As she gazes at her image in the red-room’s mirror, Jane describes herself as a “tiny phantom, half fairy, half imp” As fairy, Jane identifies herself as a special, magical creature, and reminds the reader of the importance imagination plays her in her life its all she has. Not only is Jane an undefined, almost mythical creature, but the narrative she creates also crosses boundaries by mixing realism and fantasy, she is always trying to imagine so she can block out her unhappiness to an extent she is a dreamer. We see the first instance of a supernatural intrusion into the novel in this chapter. As Jane sits nervously in the red-room, she imagines a gleam of light shining on the wall and believes it is ‘a herald of some coming vision from another world.’
Stating that she is resisting her captors like a ‘rebel slave,’ Jane continues to use the imagery of oppression begun in the previous chapter she is going against the pyramid of people. When Miss Abbot admonishes Jane for striking John Reed, Jane’s “young master,” Jane immediately questions her terminology. Is John really her master; is she his servant? Again, Jane’s position within the household is questioned, particularly her class identity.
Summary
The author creates sympathy for Jane, though the characters around her, especially John, she sometimes uses language 1st person pathetic fallacy and in depth description (when she gets punched hit or feels bad for the reader just though description). Her age is a factor in this she is 10 and could be suffering severe depression. The fact that she is looked down upon by all and sometimes seen as an animal it’s just sad.
